


Stars That Dissolve and Then Re-Group Endlessly

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: A new hope, Non-Graphic Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, The Empire Strikes Back, Women of Star Wars Week, non-graphic injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 12:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4706369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia Organa won every game she played. Athletic contests (despite her height), chess, even games of pure chance. Leia Organa had won her Senate race at the age of eighteen (although if she was honest, her name didn’t hurt with that one). She dodged every blaster bolt—sometimes even literally. She succeeded in every endeavor, through hard work and sheer willpower. If she wanted something badly enough, it came to her.</p><p>Until HE came aboard her ship, creating some kind of luck void that sucked all of her good luck away. And then all the bad luck she’d been outracing caught up with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars That Dissolve and Then Re-Group Endlessly

**Author's Note:**

> I'm beginning the process of re-posting all my tumblr one-shots here. If you follow me on tumblr, you've probably seen this already. 
> 
> I think a million of you have written about Leia around the destruction of Alderaan, more eloquently and more intensely than I. In fact, those stories were probably my introduction to fanfiction as high art. Here’s a humble offering to throw into the ring for that time period.
> 
> This was written for Women of Star Wars Week, for the Ventress prompt. To extend the quote a little: “"I died a long time ago. So did everything I cared about. It’s only the likes of me, with nothing to lose, who’ll really be prepared to tear the galaxy down and start over.“
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS for non-graphic torture, non-graphic injury, and somewhat more graphic suicidal ideation. If it’s going to throw you for a loop, just don’t read it, okay?

Leia Organa won every game she played. Athletic contests (despite her height), chess, even games of pure chance. Leia Organa had won her Senate race at the age of eighteen (although if she was honest, her name didn’t hurt with that one). She dodged every blaster bolt—sometimes even literally. She succeeded in every endeavor, through hard work and sheer willpower. If she wanted something badly enough, it came to her.

Until HE came aboard her ship, creating some kind of luck void that sucked all of her good luck away. And then all the bad luck she’d been outracing caught up with her.

She hated him. She HATED him. He called himself a Sith Lord, and he was supposed to intimidate her with his stance and his cybernetic breathing and the black armor. She reacted as she always did to fear—with anger.

And then he snatched that anger out from under her feet.

Before the first bout of torture, she was sure that she’d never break. She was furious. She braced herself and drew upon the unstoppable power of her own indignation.

It took her four seconds to crumple.

Before the second, she was terrified—not that she’d tell, but that she wouldn’t be able to tell them fast enough and it would hurt again.

By the third, she was desperate to confess whatever they suggested. She WANTED to break. She just couldn’t do it—as if her mind didn’t know how to give them the information. She was too stupid to break. Surely nobody could survive this kind of treatment, anyway. Death would be such a pleasure.

She came to covered in her own vomit and speaking words of defiance she didn’t remember having formed. She watched, horrified with herself, as they started the fourth session.

Finally they gave up. Leia Organa versus the whole Empire—Leia wins again. Vision blurred and ears ringing, she knew that for a lie. Her luck had run out and she was a little concerned that she might be dying. And she wasn’t angry—she was afraid.

 

…

 

They gave her a shot of something to get her on her feet before they marched her to the bridge. Whatever it was that brought her feet back in line also brought her mind into focus. And she stayed hyperfocused on one thought: Alderaan. Alderaan. Alderaan. Alderaan.

“Dantooine,” she said. “They’re on Dantooine.” Please go to Dantooine. It will take three days, and maybe at least they can evacuate the planet. Now that they’ve seen…

“Continue with the operation. You may fire when ready.” Tarkin spoke so casually. This was not a negotiation tactic. He meant it.

She didn’t understand.

The cannon shot poured like white hot water towards her home. She was reminded absurdly of the vase she’d knocked down as a child. Watching the totter, seeing it topple towards the floor in slow motion. She’d had so long to stand and watch it, knowing what would happen when it hit the ground. She’d had so long to wonder  _Why aren’t you moving? Catch it!_

She had caught that vase.

The laser hit at last and this time the delicate blue and white spun crystal shattered into a million fragments. Her mind screamed  _NO!_  Just like the melodramatic holovids she’d always laughed at.  _NONONO!_  and the silent shout was an action. Behind it, the thought— _Catch it, Leia_ —and she was trying to cup her mind around the pieces, shove the whole thing back together before the damage got any worse— _catch it, fix it, undo it_. But it was already done. 

Gradually she became aware of Vader’s heavy hand on her shoulder. He was looking down at her, presumably. She couldn’t see his face, but she felt the focus of his gaze. Perplexed about something. He hadn’t moved in some time.

She tried to figure out some way to unspool the damage, to bring Alderaan back, even as the soldiers marched her back to her cell to prepare her for execution. Even as that other part of her mind knew, _knew_  that her father and mother and dog and home and friends and everything were gone.

They left her alone, which was another kind of torture. They would execute her in the morning. She wouldn’t have to live without Alderaan for long.  

But for now, she had a decision to make.

In her desperation, she thought about scrambling right after her family—finding something inside the cell and slitting through her wrists or her neck and seeing if there wasn’t some way she could still help them on the other side. But they had left her nothing—nothing sharp, nothing long enough for a noose—even her own clothing wouldn’t work. In the helplessness of those white walls, it hit her—Alderaan was really gone. And Leia Organa finally broke.

But she was still angry. And anger still made a good escape from pain. So she re-evaluated her choices.  _Are you going to die?_  she asked herself. (Yes, they would come for her tomorrow.)  _Are you going to willingly give yourself up to death? Make it feel better?_

_Are you going to take this lying down?_

NO. No No No.  She took her anger and wrapped it around herself, felt it harden into a shell. Leia was gone. All the good things, all of her joy in love—those had been burned out with Alderaan.  

But now she had nothing left to protect, and hence nothing to fear. She was invincible.

Maybe she could figure out a way to destroy this station from the inside.  What did she have to lose?

 

…

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi was dead. It didn’t register past Leia’s numbness, another loss on a day filled with impossible losses.

But Luke took it hard. And she cared about Luke, had trusted him immediately with some irrational, coping-mechanism trust that didn’t merit too much investigation. There he sat at the dejarik table with the blanket she’d put around his shoulders. It wasn’t anywhere near enough. She’d try the galley for…something. She didn’t dare rest until they had seen this through and one side or the other was dead. That tingling in her hands and feet, the shock up her spine, told her that if she sat down for long she wouldn’t be able to get up on her own power again. Caf, then. Something hot to keep them all going. Surely Solo had caf in the galley.

She ran smack into the Captain’s chest.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, Your Worship!”

She had to look up to see the bottle of gin he was holding above his head, safely out of the way of her charge. The fate of the entire galaxy on the line, and he was getting drunk. He set the bottle down on the counter and she snatched it up, heading for the sink.

“You sure you should take the whole—Wait—No, don’t do that, what are you doing?!” He grabbed the bottle before she’d managed to pour much out.

“You can’t drink that straight!”

“As a matter of fact, you can. Or at least I can. I was coming to share it, but you’re under no obligations, Highness.  Anyway, after the day we’ve had, we could all use a drink.”

“The day’s not over yet, flyboy. I can’t believe anyone would be so irresponsible…with the Empire tracking us!”

“Relax, we’re in hyperspace. We’ve got another twelve hours before we hop out at your Rebel base. Plenty of time to drink and rest.”  

She eyed the bottle, huffed. What he said made sense, but she was still furious—drinking gin in the middle of a mission. “Keep going that way, and you’re going to kill yourself.”

That cocky, self-assured smile. “Hell of a way to go, though.”

“Exactly who do you think you are, Captain, to treat your life so recklessly?”

And now that already familiar frown. She’d hit a nerve. He was mad at her now for real. “Awfully self-righteous of you, Princess, to assume you know anything about how I treat my life.”

“I know enough.” She took a look around, the dingy galley, the unwashed dishes, the cabinets that were probably full of pretzels and freeze dried fried foods and not much else. “You smuggle. You’re here to turn a profit, and you’re not afraid of a little danger to do it. You like the fun of risking your life, and you feel like a big hero when you get paid. But you’re not.”

He shifted from foot to foot in irritation, but he couldn’t get around her to leave. “I sure as hell shouldn’t have been today. I should have listened to my gut and left you where you were.”

She winced before she could catch herself, and he winced back in visible regret. She should have kept it professional. That part of her life, the ability to keep it together, to be diplomatic… that might have died on the Death Star, too. She’d been running on temper alone for the last two days. Temper and the desire to get the job done.  

Try, Leia. Don’t make it personal. Bring it back to the cause. “You care about nothing, is that right, Captain? You want to throw your life away? GIVE it away.”

He snorted.

“I’m serious. You don’t think your life is worth living, then do something else with it. Dedicate it to a cause.”

“Chewie and I are doing fine. And you sound like a nun.”

She shot him her most laser-filled look, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

“Or a recruiter for the army,” he added.

“I am.”

He shrugged. She had him there. “Look, Princess. I LIKE my life. I don’t think you’re really talking to me. I think you’re talking to yourself. You want to throw your life away? Is that what this is about?”

His tone was still flippant, but something like sympathy had crept into the background of his face, now. She sensed the deep danger in that sympathy.

“How dare you, Captain Solo?” Something horrible woke and stretched on the inside. It couldn’t do that—she had a job to do.

Forget the caf. Leia turned on her heel and ran as fast as she could to the fresher.

 

…

 

Hoth was so cold that their bodies always stung with the pain of it. But this—this was something new. This was a shock.  

The pain hit her chest and blossomed instantly outwards, ripping, some kind of impact weapon. She didn’t see it coming. But she did turn her head and catch a glimpse in the two seconds before Chewie’s bowcaster took him down. Not stormtrooper armor. The old uniform of Alderaan’s security force.

Oh.

Han looked at her chest, where his hand was already pressing hard against the flow of blood. Then he looked up at her face, terrified. Oh. “Hold on,” he said.

Things on the periphery were already fading out. “Look at me. Right here at me. Chewie’s getting help. Stay with me. Princess! Leia! Leia! Don’t go.”  

No. She wasn’t going. She kept her eyes fixed on the center, where it wasn’t hazy yet—Han’s hazel eyes. An absurd pun on those eyes floated through her mind, and it occurred to her that she had more to lose than ever. Friends who would grieve too fiercely if she left. Debts unpaid. Gratitude snapped back in vicious, defensive words. A war to win. She had more to lose than ever, and more to protect.

She gritted her teeth to fight unconsciousness, put on her own best steely expression. It had to sound nonsensical to him, but it kept her going until the med team got there. “I’m. Not. Done. Yet.” 


End file.
